Superhero Filmmakers: Where's Our Watchmen?

Kevin Smith:

I saw “Watchmen.” It’s fucking astounding. The Non-Disclosure Agreement I signed prevents me from saying much, but I can spout the following with complete joygasmic enthusiasm: Snyder and Co. have pulled it off.

Remember that feeling of watching “Sin City” on the big screen and being blown away by what a faithful translation of the source material it was, in terms of both content and visuals? Triple that, and you’ll come close to watching “Watchmen.” Even Alan Moore might be surprised at how close the movie is to the book. March can’t come soon enough.

/shakeybait

> Covering the events was ... Michael Moran

!!!

http://jaqrabbit.com/moore/Miracleman.jpg

Sin City was awful btw

kevin smith saw the 3 hour cut and called it "a fucking masterpiece" or something oh xp

I remember back when they were pushing for Arnold. Then he was Mr. Freeze and that took care of that.

Sin City was awful btw

-- Shakey Mo Collier

Remember that feeling of watching “Sin City” on the big screen and being blown away by what a faithful translation of the source material it was, in terms of both content and visuals?

"joygasmic"

"Sin City" was great on the big screen, not so great on TV.

Then again everyone here hated "300", too.

yeah I saw Sin City on TV. It started to hurt my eyes after awhile and then I fell asleep. when I woke up Rosario Dawson was sweating or something.

i am shocked that contenderizer and shakey mo hated sin city

FWIW, I hated 300 and Sin City as comic books, too. Well, the art in Sin City is pretty good, but even translating panels directly to digitally fucked-with film removes the way Frank Miller handles ink, which is the only thing I've liked about the guy for years.

nb: i am not shocked

I've been re-reading some of my old Miller stuff lately and frankly am shocked that anybody thinks of this guy's dialogue as anything but schlock. His stories are compelling, but the narration & speech is awful.

yeah he's seriously deficient as a writer - I think the only time he really overcame his limitations were with Ronin (which is truly beautiful) and Batman: Year One.

sin shitty

that's brilliant!

who scotches the botchmen

300 and Sin City are both excellent popcorn movies; you went expecting high drama?
Miller's high points as a writer for my money are Give Me Liberty, Ronin, Year One and most of the Daredevil run. Dark Knight, Sin City and anything he's done in the past five years doesn't hold up too well.
Also:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ryan.coombes/Myworld/cain1.JPG

nuke

gimme a red

300 and Sin City are both excellent popcorn movies; you went expecting high drama?

I went to Sin City expecting a good movie.

but it was a comic book adaptation

I got one. Your mileage varied, I guess.

ONLY SEVEN MONTHS AWAY

JUST THINK

Miller's second run on Daredevil (w/Mazzuchelli) >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> his first run

Remember that feeling of watching “Sin City” on the big screen and being blown away by what a faithful translation of the source material it was, in terms of both content and visuals? Triple that, and you’ll come close to watching “Watchmen.”

This actually sounds pretty bad, because one of the reasons Sin City sucked was exactly the way it tried so slavishly to transfer everything in the original comic to the screen. Film is a different medium than comic, and you as a filmmaker should realize that.

I wouldn't call Kevin Smith a filmmaker. He's more like a fanboy with a camera.

Yeah, but I was referring to Snyder and whoever it was who did Sin City.

jesus god you people are dour

whadayamean Dan I lol at you all the time!

re: pretty-looking movies, I mean

I'm not going to defend either "300" or "Sin City" as an artistic triumph in terms of storytelling because they aren't (although "300" does a better job of getting its story across than "Sin City", mostly because there isn't a prominent actor completely flubbing an American accent in it) but both of them are visually-stunning; most of my enjoyment of both movies came from the deep commitment to visual style evidenced in both.

yeah i use that one to justify Matrix Reloaded all the time :/

how's that working out for you

I've actually liked all the Kevin Smith films I've seen. He's not much of a filmmaker, yes, but at least the dialogue is usually funny.

Sin City, on the had, was at least cinematically ambitious, but nevertheless a failure, because 1) it tried to cram three different comic series into one movie instead of filming just one of them, thus making the pacing terrible with no breathing space at all, and 2) the director thought he could do the exact same things in a movie than in a comic, and it would still look equally good. Stuff like the cartoonish weightless bodies or caricatures like the Yellow Bastard simply looked silly, because cinema is inherently a more "realistic" medium, and therefore exaggeration and caricaturization can't be used in it the same way as in a comic.

(xxx-post)

Film is a different medium than comic, and you as a filmmaker should realize that.

-- Tuomas, Wednesday, August 20, 2008 7:36 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

ya no duh. that doesn't mean experimenting by combining the two might not be worthwhile! or at least produce interesting results.

i agree it's not quite a success but it was still pretty neat & different and a lot more interesting than many other ways a sin city adaptation could have gone.

i mean the fact that people are making experimental art flicks based on "sin city" these days still kind of blows my mind... think about what an '80s adaptation would have looked like

Reloaded is great, though! It's Revolution that is super-embarrassing.

Tuomas:

1. If Rodriguez/Miller had only done one story, the movie would have been 40 minutes long.
2. The entire point of the movie was to transfer the comic book's imagery to film; change that and you basically have three shitty stories unworthy of direct-to-video release. (or s1ocki OTM)

The entire point of the movie was to transfer the comic book's imagery to film

this doesn't strike me as a particularly good reason to make a movie

what does strike you as a particularly good reason to make a movie?

eh, grandma?

"I really wanted to help the homeless, so I decided to make 'The House Bunny'."

In Every Multiplex, A Meet The Spartans

</raggett>

1. If Rodriguez/Miller had only done one story, the movie would have been 40 minutes long.

I think you could've actually easily made an enjoyable 90-100 minute feature film based on the first comic only. But now the whole story is told in 50 minutes super-speed with no room for atmospherics, breathing space, etc. For example, take the scene where Marv walks in the rain and tries to figure out who's pulling the strings behind everything that's happened. In the comic Miller devotes several splash pages to it, and it really feels like a needed pause between the action scenes, a calm before the final storm. But in the movie the whole scene is done with fast cuts in a couple of minutes, and it doesn't have the same effect at all.

omg that would have been the most excruciating thing on Earth

what does strike you as a particularly good reason to make a movie?

To make an adaptation that uses cinema's own strengths and gives the viewer a new interpretation of the basic story, instead of slavishly copying all the visual aspects and the plot from the original comic.